9 ms·

Priced out the one I would buy and it is $4300. Seems the value isn't quite there. Hard to say though without playing with it for a while. So clearly I need to

Priced out the one I would buy and it is $4300. Seems the value isn't quite there. Hard to say though without playing with it for a while. So clearly I need to go back to work for some tech company that will buy one for me :-). It is more interesting to me to reflect on the comments from about 5 years ago that "ARM will never be in laptops, its a 'phone' processor." That statement was both true and ignored the reality that if you wanted to put an ARM processor in a laptop you could add features and design it to work that way. Chip design is expensive of course, and so being a company like Apple really makes it possible to do this sort of thing as a 'risk' venture, but what surprises me is that Apple spent maybe $10B over the years developing an in house ARM design capability (after buying PA Semi) and here it is paying them some huge dividends. If you compare that to Microsoft's efforts trying to use off the shelf ARM chips in the original Surface and now the Surface RT and you can really see the advantage of having the chip designers and the software designers depending on each other. That was true in the "WinTel" era when Intel and Microsoft were joined at the hip, but it was never the case for ARM CPU vendors who were more concerned about being in the next flagship phone than what ever it was that Microsoft was doing. What an interesting alternate history if Microsoft decided to develop an in house production chip capability at the same time they decided to get into the hardware business for "real." [1] [1] Yes, I'm aware they have done custom chips, the pixel/pen processor in the Surface is one such but they haven't really jumped in with both feet like Apple did, and certainly haven't had it front and center as long as Apple has.

alienalp 5y ago
First gen of m1 mac was first Apple product that i bought. I can't say i like Apple ecosystem or macos. I am opposite of Apple fanboy. I don't like Apple and this price they made me pay another reason for it but simply anybody who want and who can afford will buy it. There aren't any alternatives.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  As a review, I like this. An expanded list of likes/dislikes from a someone with universal dissatisfaction is always good to read.
jamesfmilne 5y ago
You'll get a solid 4-5 years use out of such a device. I did out of my 2016 MacBook Pro. Even if you depreciate at $1000k/year, that's not too bad for a professional tool. It's not worth $0 after 4 years either.
- TillE 5y ago
  Heck I was still using my 2012 Macbook Air until pretty recently, a decent machine if you don't mind that it gets really hot under load. Barring any major fiascos (like past keyboard issues), the 2021 MBP does look built to last. We're in a good spot now in terms of stuff like a great screen (if you don't need constant 120Hz), low-power video decoding, a solid 8-core CPU, and probably even a passable gaming GPU. Should remain very usable even as it's outclassed in subsequent generations.
  - genghisjahn 5y ago
    Same with my MBA 2012. Works great. Will get an M1 something or other and pass the MBA on to my daughter. If I get approx 10 years out of the M1?, I’m happy.
  - busymom0 5y ago
    My MacBook Pro from 2012 (the one without Retina display and had an optical drive too which I replaced with a secondary SSD) lasted me over 8 years. It finally overheated during summer (my house was very hot and fans were probably clogged). I do iOS and Android app development, so that $1000 device made me tons of money in return.
    - reducesuffering 5y ago
      Yep. Still running a 2013 MBP here
      - elboru 5y ago
        Same here, for the first time in 8 years I’m considering to upgrade.
solarmist 5y ago
Apple has always been a hardware company though. Software has just been for the purpose of selling their hardware. MSFT is the opposite. So it makes sense it be much slower/harder to get going in this area.
- ChuckMcM 5y ago
  I completely agree with that, Microsoft's foundation was software. What is intriguing is that when they decided to "go hardware" (which started with Mice and Keyboards and later game consoles, tablets, phones, and laptops) their execution strategy didn't evolve to making their own silicon until much much later. Apple was much more aggressive here with the PowerPC alliance after Motorola let them down followed by later moves into chip design. I am always fascinated by seeing how the "core competency" of a company constrains its execution options later in its existence. Sun, for example, really was a 'sales' company first and it couldn't "sell its way" out of the wave of Linux clusters that started displacing its servers. Now as a hardware company it too was let down by Motorola and that was some of the genesis for SPARC much like Apple's move. But as a sales company Sun kept shooting anyone who used their "open" architecture CPU by ruthlessly out selling them.
- mcovalt 5y ago
  > Apple has always been a hardware company though. Software has just been for the purpose of selling their hardware. I'm not sure that's the right perspective. Steve Jobs said in an interview [0] that "Apple views itself as a software company." [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEeyaAUCyZs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEeyaAUCyZs
  - solarmist 5y ago
    They definitely don't behave like a hardware company. And arguably much (most?) of their value comes from their software. But at their core selling hardware is where the money comes from.
smoldesu 5y ago
I expect to be surrounded by pitchforks and torches for saying this, but I genuinely believe that Linux is the true winner of today's presentation. The last few months have been watershed times for both Apple and Microsoft. Starting with Apple, their developer relations are starting to crumble in a major way. Not only have developers stood up against their highway robbery, but other companies like Microsoft have one-upped them just for the hell of it. Today's presentation was almost completely devoid of any software discussion, which is really what puts the nail in the coffin for me. A 5nm laptop chip will always be more powerful than the 14nm one I've got, but at least my chip runs the software I want. Without a commitment to replacing 32-bit libraries, updating their coreutils or making a package manager developers actually want to use, I think Apple's message is clear: We're pivoting away from the 'Pro' market and heading straight into 'Prosumer'. To their credit, it seems like they've made a fine prosumer laptop. Microsoft, on the other hand, has usurped their enthusiast community with Windows 11. The strict CPU requirement in particular was a bad move on their behalf, and it's going to leave a lot of their install base out in the cold. While I don't expect a whole lot of consumers to pivot to Linux, I can imagine a lot of developers making the switch. Many devs already use WSL, so they're pretty familiar with Unix systems as-is. The Windows-to-Linux onboarding experience is getting better and better as Wine is continuing to close the gap in compatibility. Especially for the gamer/enthusiast market Microsoft traditionally caters to, the value proposition of using Windows is diminishing by the day. Windows 11 does nothing to change that, and actively impedes your workflow if you're on a Ryzen CPU. I think for a lot of people's workflow, Linux will be the only thing left that "just works" in a few years time.
- packetlost 5y ago
  I use Linux daily. "Just works" is a stretch as soon as you throw any GUI + desktop environment into the equation. Even more hairy if you add an nvidia GPU in. The average consumer is more likely to switch to ChromeOS (which I guess is Linux underneath, for now) than to any Linux distro.
  - JohnTHaller 5y ago
    > Even more hairy if you add an nvidia GPU in. You're also describing Mac with that one. But worse.
bredren 5y ago
> Seems the value isn't quite there. The MBPs are astonishingly good machines, but I agree the price is always forces tough questions about value and fit. I suspect the lack of a Mini update was in part to buffet purchases of these more expensive laptops. So many people are traveling and commuting less now, cheaper Mini's would have undermined sales of the MBP. I'm running an XDR Pro Display off a 2018 Intel mini with an eGPU, and going to wait out for presumably a 2022 M2 Mini.
- 8ytecoder 5y ago
  I don't think so. The iMac sure. The Mac pro, may be. These machines don't compete with the mini. I like the mini in theory but I'd never shell out to buy one. I almost never work just from a desk. With WFH, the average person is likely to lie in bed or couch or work from the kitchen counter and dining table, than they are to work from a proper desktop. (Not even to mention the fact that you'd need to have/buy a good display and keyboard setup to go with it.)
  - malshe 5y ago
    My experience matches this. I have converted a guest bedroom upstairs into my office but I can't sit there all day and work. I go down to the living room after lunch and also work from the back porch whenever I can. I have a desktop PC but I barely touch it.
thathndude 5y ago
This is the one I bought!
swat535 5y ago
> Seems the value isn't quite there I'm curious, what exactly is this machine missing in your opinion and given the choice, what would you go with other than the recently introduced MacbookPro ?
- skohan 5y ago
  I can't speak for the other commenter, but for me the M1 air is so good I wouldn't feel the need to pay several times more for a "pro" machine.
  - shrimpx 5y ago
    Yeah. The M1 Air is also fanless and thinner and lighter. The prospect of fan noise in particular is a turnoff.
makeitdouble 5y ago
> Priced out the one I would buy and it is $4300. Seems the value isn't quite there. I was also surprised at how high the maxed out laptops can go in price. From memory, around the 2015 model line the top end would be at around $3000 without the crazy disk options. There was a rule of the thumb that Apple priced their product at a rough ratio of $2 / day. That would give 4 year for my 2014 laptop, and it mostly did. That would be 5.5 years for the top end 16" laptop, I guess that's reasonable ?
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  FWIW, while I’m disappointed by the pricing I bought a 2019 16": - Mid CPU - Lowest available discrete GPU - Max RAM - 2 TB SSD RAM was my absolute must have, and to get the same on today's MBP: - I would have to at least max the CPU - That’s substantially better GPU than I’d buy otherwise For the same RAM and storage, the price is almost identical (in fact it might be identical but I don’t feel like digging up my old order to compare such a small difference). I am disappointed they didn’t move the price down more. And I’m disappointed I have to buy more compute than I care about to get the other specs I want. But it’s clear at least to me this is more value for my money than I paid 2 years ago.
  - bredren 5y ago
    It’s worse if you bought a recent Intel based MacBook Air. I have a 2018 and it’s bad performance and battery compared to the M1.
    - eyelidlessness 5y ago
      I mean I paid probably 3-4x what you did for a similarly outclassed computer so IDK if it’s worse.
      - bredren 5y ago
        Ah I thought I read you had a 2016. I realize I haven’t looked at the exact price / performance jumps between the releases across MBA and MBP for Intel to Apple Silicon. I’m curious just how big of a change there was across common metrics.
manmal 5y ago
> Seems the value isn't quite there Looks like you are not in the target audience for those machines. The value is absolutely there if you need the CPU to do as much work as possible. As someone who spends a big chunk of my day compiling, a speedup by x2 means I need to wait half as long. And it won’t even toast my lap. The 1K nits screen means I can finally work outside in summer. This is _exactly_ the machine the disgruntled ecosystem has been calling for, for at least 5 years now. While the 5nm process will certainly yield good AMD CPUs, the iOS/macOS optimizations built into Apple Silicon are hard to match for general-purpose CPUs. And the GPU story looks bad for Nvidia - the Max 32 core GPU uses half the power envelope for almost the same output as the mobile RTX 3080. And afaik the 3080 is already produced on 7nm, so there will be some engineering to do to get there.
- R6 5y ago
  People are comparing Apples and Oranges. (Ha) Look at a Mobile Workstation class laptop and those are easily 5k+. Those are the ones to compare with the high end MBPs. Not your USD 1500 Windows laptops.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    And mobile workstations will keep you tethered to the wall and you can only tote them in an XL backpack.
  - sytelus 5y ago
    I've RTX discrete card maxed out laptop with 64GB RAM, dual SSDs, 4K OLED and what not. It was priced at around $4500. The battery life is about 2 hours and fan runs so fast that it almost sounds like a siren. I'd to do hours worth to tweaking to force run its CPU and other components run at very low speed to make it usable in untethered mode. It needs so much power when charging that plugs in airplane charger refuse to charge it.
    - andy_ppp 5y ago
      How did you even open the lid more than 60 degrees?
reacharavindh 5y ago
I wish the non-Apple ecosystem gave a clear alternative that allows us to choose specs like this :-( I look at Lenovo Thinkpad with Ryzen 5000 CPUs, they are stuck with crappy displays. Dell has better displays but not the Ryzens CPUs I wanted. Framework is modular but no Ryzen. Nothing makes me want to open my wallet. I’d love almost exactly a MacBook Pro spec with M1Max replaced by Ryzen 5000 series CPU and 64 GiB of memory, and an excellent display. May be that unicorn of achieve will cost as much as your configured MacBook Pro :-(
- dna_polymerase 5y ago
  Eventually the Ryzen Framework will come and then the whole discussion is over for me. I won't buy a >$2000 device that isn't upgradeable, repairable and has a poor Linux story.
  - ChuckMcM 5y ago
    I would buy that in a femptosecond.
  - reacharavindh 5y ago
    Same with me when Framework gets big enough to provide the top dog choices, I'd happily pay a premium for the modularity and run Linux. Hope that day is not too far.
- weystrom 5y ago
  So I was looking for an alternative and bought Lenovo Yoga Slim 7. Ryzen 5800H with 90Hz 1440p screen. It runs loud af, fan is constantly pulsing, but it's an alright machine for ~1200eu. It's now going on ebay to fund the mbp purchase, I want better thermals out of my laptop.

alienalp 5y ago

First gen of m1 mac was first Apple product that i bought. I can't say i like Apple ecosystem or macos. I am opposite of Apple fanboy. I don't like Apple and this price they made me pay another reason for it but simply anybody who want and who can afford will buy it. There aren't any alternatives.

lostlogin 5y ago
As a review, I like this. An expanded list of likes/dislikes from a someone with universal dissatisfaction is always good to read.

jamesfmilne 5y ago

You'll get a solid 4-5 years use out of such a device. I did out of my 2016 MacBook Pro. Even if you depreciate at $1000k/year, that's not too bad for a professional tool. It's not worth $0 after 4 years either.

TillE 5y ago
Heck I was still using my 2012 Macbook Air until pretty recently, a decent machine if you don't mind that it gets really hot under load. Barring any major fiascos (like past keyboard issues), the 2021 MBP does look built to last. We're in a good spot now in terms of stuff like a great screen (if you don't need constant 120Hz), low-power video decoding, a solid 8-core CPU, and probably even a passable gaming GPU. Should remain very usable even as it's outclassed in subsequent generations.
- genghisjahn 5y ago
  Same with my MBA 2012. Works great. Will get an M1 something or other and pass the MBA on to my daughter. If I get approx 10 years out of the M1?, I’m happy.
- busymom0 5y ago
  My MacBook Pro from 2012 (the one without Retina display and had an optical drive too which I replaced with a secondary SSD) lasted me over 8 years. It finally overheated during summer (my house was very hot and fans were probably clogged). I do iOS and Android app development, so that $1000 device made me tons of money in return.
  - reducesuffering 5y ago
    Yep. Still running a 2013 MBP here
    - elboru 5y ago
      Same here, for the first time in 8 years I’m considering to upgrade.

solarmist 5y ago

Apple has always been a hardware company though. Software has just been for the purpose of selling their hardware. MSFT is the opposite. So it makes sense it be much slower/harder to get going in this area.

ChuckMcM 5y ago
I completely agree with that, Microsoft's foundation was software. What is intriguing is that when they decided to "go hardware" (which started with Mice and Keyboards and later game consoles, tablets, phones, and laptops) their execution strategy didn't evolve to making their own silicon until much much later. Apple was much more aggressive here with the PowerPC alliance after Motorola let them down followed by later moves into chip design. I am always fascinated by seeing how the "core competency" of a company constrains its execution options later in its existence. Sun, for example, really was a 'sales' company first and it couldn't "sell its way" out of the wave of Linux clusters that started displacing its servers. Now as a hardware company it too was let down by Motorola and that was some of the genesis for SPARC much like Apple's move. But as a sales company Sun kept shooting anyone who used their "open" architecture CPU by ruthlessly out selling them.
mcovalt 5y ago
> Apple has always been a hardware company though. Software has just been for the purpose of selling their hardware. I'm not sure that's the right perspective. Steve Jobs said in an interview [0] that "Apple views itself as a software company." [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEeyaAUCyZs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEeyaAUCyZs
- solarmist 5y ago
  They definitely don't behave like a hardware company. And arguably much (most?) of their value comes from their software. But at their core selling hardware is where the money comes from.

smoldesu 5y ago

I expect to be surrounded by pitchforks and torches for saying this, but I genuinely believe that Linux is the true winner of today's presentation. The last few months have been watershed times for both Apple and Microsoft. Starting with Apple, their developer relations are starting to crumble in a major way. Not only have developers stood up against their highway robbery, but other companies like Microsoft have one-upped them just for the hell of it. Today's presentation was almost completely devoid of any software discussion, which is really what puts the nail in the coffin for me. A 5nm laptop chip will always be more powerful than the 14nm one I've got, but at least my chip runs the software I want. Without a commitment to replacing 32-bit libraries, updating their coreutils or making a package manager developers actually want to use, I think Apple's message is clear: We're pivoting away from the 'Pro' market and heading straight into 'Prosumer'. To their credit, it seems like they've made a fine prosumer laptop. Microsoft, on the other hand, has usurped their enthusiast community with Windows 11. The strict CPU requirement in particular was a bad move on their behalf, and it's going to leave a lot of their install base out in the cold. While I don't expect a whole lot of consumers to pivot to Linux, I can imagine a lot of developers making the switch. Many devs already use WSL, so they're pretty familiar with Unix systems as-is. The Windows-to-Linux onboarding experience is getting better and better as Wine is continuing to close the gap in compatibility. Especially for the gamer/enthusiast market Microsoft traditionally caters to, the value proposition of using Windows is diminishing by the day. Windows 11 does nothing to change that, and actively impedes your workflow if you're on a Ryzen CPU. I think for a lot of people's workflow, Linux will be the only thing left that "just works" in a few years time.

packetlost 5y ago
I use Linux daily. "Just works" is a stretch as soon as you throw any GUI + desktop environment into the equation. Even more hairy if you add an nvidia GPU in. The average consumer is more likely to switch to ChromeOS (which I guess is Linux underneath, for now) than to any Linux distro.
- JohnTHaller 5y ago
  > Even more hairy if you add an nvidia GPU in. You're also describing Mac with that one. But worse.

bredren 5y ago

> Seems the value isn't quite there. The MBPs are astonishingly good machines, but I agree the price is always forces tough questions about value and fit. I suspect the lack of a Mini update was in part to buffet purchases of these more expensive laptops. So many people are traveling and commuting less now, cheaper Mini's would have undermined sales of the MBP. I'm running an XDR Pro Display off a 2018 Intel mini with an eGPU, and going to wait out for presumably a 2022 M2 Mini.

8ytecoder 5y ago
I don't think so. The iMac sure. The Mac pro, may be. These machines don't compete with the mini. I like the mini in theory but I'd never shell out to buy one. I almost never work just from a desk. With WFH, the average person is likely to lie in bed or couch or work from the kitchen counter and dining table, than they are to work from a proper desktop. (Not even to mention the fact that you'd need to have/buy a good display and keyboard setup to go with it.)
- malshe 5y ago
  My experience matches this. I have converted a guest bedroom upstairs into my office but I can't sit there all day and work. I go down to the living room after lunch and also work from the back porch whenever I can. I have a desktop PC but I barely touch it.

thathndude 5y ago

This is the one I bought!

swat535 5y ago

> Seems the value isn't quite there I'm curious, what exactly is this machine missing in your opinion and given the choice, what would you go with other than the recently introduced MacbookPro ?

skohan 5y ago
I can't speak for the other commenter, but for me the M1 air is so good I wouldn't feel the need to pay several times more for a "pro" machine.
- shrimpx 5y ago
  Yeah. The M1 Air is also fanless and thinner and lighter. The prospect of fan noise in particular is a turnoff.

makeitdouble 5y ago

> Priced out the one I would buy and it is $4300. Seems the value isn't quite there. I was also surprised at how high the maxed out laptops can go in price. From memory, around the 2015 model line the top end would be at around $3000 without the crazy disk options. There was a rule of the thumb that Apple priced their product at a rough ratio of $2 / day. That would give 4 year for my 2014 laptop, and it mostly did. That would be 5.5 years for the top end 16" laptop, I guess that's reasonable ?

eyelidlessness 5y ago
FWIW, while I’m disappointed by the pricing I bought a 2019 16": - Mid CPU - Lowest available discrete GPU - Max RAM - 2 TB SSD RAM was my absolute must have, and to get the same on today's MBP: - I would have to at least max the CPU - That’s substantially better GPU than I’d buy otherwise For the same RAM and storage, the price is almost identical (in fact it might be identical but I don’t feel like digging up my old order to compare such a small difference). I am disappointed they didn’t move the price down more. And I’m disappointed I have to buy more compute than I care about to get the other specs I want. But it’s clear at least to me this is more value for my money than I paid 2 years ago.
- bredren 5y ago
  It’s worse if you bought a recent Intel based MacBook Air. I have a 2018 and it’s bad performance and battery compared to the M1.
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    I mean I paid probably 3-4x what you did for a similarly outclassed computer so IDK if it’s worse.
    - bredren 5y ago
      Ah I thought I read you had a 2016. I realize I haven’t looked at the exact price / performance jumps between the releases across MBA and MBP for Intel to Apple Silicon. I’m curious just how big of a change there was across common metrics.

manmal 5y ago

> Seems the value isn't quite there Looks like you are not in the target audience for those machines. The value is absolutely there if you need the CPU to do as much work as possible. As someone who spends a big chunk of my day compiling, a speedup by x2 means I need to wait half as long. And it won’t even toast my lap. The 1K nits screen means I can finally work outside in summer. This is _exactly_ the machine the disgruntled ecosystem has been calling for, for at least 5 years now. While the 5nm process will certainly yield good AMD CPUs, the iOS/macOS optimizations built into Apple Silicon are hard to match for general-purpose CPUs. And the GPU story looks bad for Nvidia - the Max 32 core GPU uses half the power envelope for almost the same output as the mobile RTX 3080. And afaik the 3080 is already produced on 7nm, so there will be some engineering to do to get there.

R6 5y ago
People are comparing Apples and Oranges. (Ha) Look at a Mobile Workstation class laptop and those are easily 5k+. Those are the ones to compare with the high end MBPs. Not your USD 1500 Windows laptops.
- kube-system 5y ago
  And mobile workstations will keep you tethered to the wall and you can only tote them in an XL backpack.
- sytelus 5y ago
  I've RTX discrete card maxed out laptop with 64GB RAM, dual SSDs, 4K OLED and what not. It was priced at around $4500. The battery life is about 2 hours and fan runs so fast that it almost sounds like a siren. I'd to do hours worth to tweaking to force run its CPU and other components run at very low speed to make it usable in untethered mode. It needs so much power when charging that plugs in airplane charger refuse to charge it.
  - andy_ppp 5y ago
    How did you even open the lid more than 60 degrees?

reacharavindh 5y ago

I wish the non-Apple ecosystem gave a clear alternative that allows us to choose specs like this :-( I look at Lenovo Thinkpad with Ryzen 5000 CPUs, they are stuck with crappy displays. Dell has better displays but not the Ryzens CPUs I wanted. Framework is modular but no Ryzen. Nothing makes me want to open my wallet. I’d love almost exactly a MacBook Pro spec with M1Max replaced by Ryzen 5000 series CPU and 64 GiB of memory, and an excellent display. May be that unicorn of achieve will cost as much as your configured MacBook Pro :-(

dna_polymerase 5y ago
Eventually the Ryzen Framework will come and then the whole discussion is over for me. I won't buy a >$2000 device that isn't upgradeable, repairable and has a poor Linux story.
- ChuckMcM 5y ago
  I would buy that in a femptosecond.
- reacharavindh 5y ago
  Same with me when Framework gets big enough to provide the top dog choices, I'd happily pay a premium for the modularity and run Linux. Hope that day is not too far.
weystrom 5y ago
So I was looking for an alternative and bought Lenovo Yoga Slim 7. Ryzen 5800H with 90Hz 1440p screen. It runs loud af, fan is constantly pulsing, but it's an alright machine for ~1200eu. It's now going on ebay to fund the mbp purchase, I want better thermals out of my laptop.